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<p>Hmm. I think that this goes back to a classic conundrum in trying to rank colleges or punch up league tables. Do we look at quality of research/faculty or quality of education for undergrads? If we choose the former, than we really ought to drop Brown and Dartmouth from our top schools and add Berkeley and Michigan. A few other publics could feasibly break the top 15 and JHU could go into the top 10. I think that MIT and Stanford might go over Harvard/Yale/Princeton. I think that this is pretty close to what the peer assessment rankings measure. </p>
<p>If it’s just about quality of education, than there would be compelling arguments for bringing a lot of small, private schools to the top of the heap. I used to go to a school outside of the US News top 50 and they put tons of effort into educating undergrads and providing support services. If our rankings emphasized quality of education, you’d see lots of small schools beating big “brand name” universities and I doubt people would accept the list. </p>
<p>US News basically tries to combine those two approaches so the best ranked schools have small undergraduate programs as well as big research programs and professional schools.</p>